Understanding Society Scientific Conference 2025
Session: Employment – Part I
Location: EBS 2.2
Start Time: 11:55
End Time: 12:15
Title: PARALLEL SESSION D
Day: Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Miss Concetta Gigante
This paper studies how active labour market policies such as the minimum wage policy impact low income individuals. It studies the recent rise of the minimum wage on in-work poverty and labour market outcomes such as wages, hours of work and re-employment across different regions in Great Britain. The project tries to provide quantitative guidance on reducing in-work poverty, improve standard of living and promote inclusivity and growth at regional level, by estimating the rise of the minimum wage across different geographical regions. Leveraging on the Understanding Society data, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, the paper implements quasi-experimental methods and targets regions with high rate of deprivation in Britain to understand how minimum wage policies can address employment skills shortage and place mismatches, as well as how this policy can support regions in reducing in-work poverty. The paper is divided in two interrelated parts. In the first part, I conduct a longitudinal study of the impact of the minimum wage through a difference in difference estimation. In the second part, I estimate the causal impact of minimum wage on in-work poverty and unemployment. Through this research, I try to elucidate the importance and benefit of spatial active labour market policies such as the minimum wage to reducing in-work inequalities and raising inclusivity of low income level individuals in work.